Huge Numbers

My book Huge Numbers is published by Basic Books (April 2026) and is also available as an e-book and audiobook. Below are the covers for the US and UK editions. A Korean edition, published by Book21 is also in preparation.

Read about the book:

• A free extract, on the Endless progress of time: The Mayan Long Count, over at Plus Magazine (link).
• Why Humans Are Obsessed With Numbers Too Big to Understand, a discussion of the themes behind the book, at Gizmodo (link).
• How does the book fare in the “Page 99 Test”? Answer here (link).

Reviews

Editorial Reviews

“Humanity has always been entranced by big numbers — the bigger the better. This fascinating exploration of the giants of the mathematical world is clear, informative, and immensely readable. Wonderful!” – Ian Stewart

“A charming tour through the realm of the very, very, very numerous, from the ancient world through the distant future.”  – Jordan Ellenberg

“Elwes provides a phenomenal scenic tour of googology (the study of huge numbers), covering everything from ancient Mayan and Babylonian numeral systems to the scale of the universe to the dizzyingly fast-growing functions of mathematical logic. I wish I had written this book.” – Scott Aaronson

Public & Media Reviews

“Richard Elwes’s new book Huge Numbers is great.” – Alex James in The Times

“It’s a delightful survey of the field of googology, the study of large numbers… the patient reader willing to stick with Elwes will be rewarded with a new appreciation for numbers and a vastly expanded frame of reference for what it means to be truly, unfathomably, large. It’s a joy to marvel at how boundaries have been broken time and again, thanks to the creative, intrepid explorers of the biggest numbers known.” – Emily Conover in Science News

“At first I was grumpy about this book by Richard Elwes because I wanted to write a book about big numbers myself someday. But this book is so entertaining and intelligent I couldn’t stay angry. Enjoy it!” – John Carlos Baez

“Elwes is infectiously bouncy, with dashes of light-touch humour mixed in with the explanations of how we get from numbers we can count without trying to numbers that presumably required several long and furious email chains with the typesetters…. it’s a lot of fun – Elwes clearly cares about googology, understands that it’s a slightly silly thing to care about, but also that by caring about silly things, you can reach some very serious mathematics.” – Colin Beveridge at The Aperiodical

“Reading this book is a little bit like sitting in the back row of an auction house where a rare Picasso (let’s say) is up for grabs: How high is this thing going to go? And indeed, Elwes keeps going…. By now, popular math books have a long and established track record… Yet few books seem to have explored the territory that Elwes has carved out here, focusing on numbers that are ridiculously large and yet finite. ” – Dan Falk at Undark Magazine

“There are two main strands here. Firstly, he asks how big are the numbers people need and which ones mark our world’s outer limits? Secondly, what systems do we use for describing or processing these numbers? What are the biggest values they can cope with before they break down? …I defy you not to laugh out loud at least twice.” – Liz Else in New Scientist